Sunday, May 26, 2013

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, has continued to defend the company's tax affairs, insisting it would comply with British law if it was changed and claiming to be perplexed by the debate.

In a phrase less snappy than the more celebrated "don't be evil", Schmidt said Google had "a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders" that prevented the internet company from paying more tax abroad. However, he said: "It's not a debate. You pay the taxes."

Google has come in for escalating public criticism, including unusually frank words from senior politicians, since the House of Commons public accounts committee took it to task this month over figures that revealed payments of £3.4m in tax on £3.2bn of sales to customers in Britain last year, with sales technically accounted for under the low-tax regime of Ireland.

Fears that George Osborne, the chancellor, is stoking a new housing bubble through plans to boost mortgages may be exacerbated by figures showing house prices grew faster in May than at any time in the past six years.

Prices rose 0.4%, the most since May 2007, driven mainly by the market in London and the south-east – although the rest of the UK also averaged a marginal rise.

Data from Hometrack, a property analytics firm, shows prices grew by 0.9% in the capital last month, and by 0.5% across the south-east.

Radical Islamist groups which whip up hatred but do not advocate violence could be outlawed in the UK for the first time, under an attempt to curb the spread of hardline ideology being considered by the Government following the Woolwich murder.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, warned that there were thousands of people judged to be at risk of being radicalised as she set out moves to deprive hardliners of platforms for their views. They include plans to ban more organisations accused of fomenting division and to tighten the rules on their access to the internet, as well as the revival of plans for a "snooper's charter".

But the moves threaten to provoke a freedom-of-speech row as organisations which stop short of advocating terrorism could be banned under the proposals, which will be considered by a Whitehall task force headed by David Cameron.

In a conflict which worsens by the week, this is a week when critical decisions on the next steps in Syria must be made.

On Monday, meetings of foreign ministers in Brussels and Paris could pave the way for more weapons to be supplied to the opposition or more arm-twisting to push all sides towards the negotiating table.

In Brussels, EU foreign ministers need to decide whether to renew a package of sanctions on Syria, including an arms embargo which expires at the end of this week.

Key players, including the UK and France, have been lobbying for months for an easing of the embargo.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday expressed extreme concern over the increasing risk of the spillover of the Syrian unrest to Lebanon, urging respect for the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries in the region.

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned by the acknowledged increased participation in the fighting in Syria by Hezbollah, as well as by the risk of spillover in Lebanon, which has witnessed growing tension over the past week," said a statement released by Ban's spokesperson. "All in the region should act responsibly and work towards lowering rhetoric and calming tensions in the region."

Two rockets hit the Hezbollah-controlled southern part of Lebanese capital city on Sunday, wounding five people. The attack came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah overtly defended his group's backing to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Workers at global internet retailer Amazon.com's German operations are set to go on a second daylong strike on Monday in a dispute over pay and benefits.

Trade union Verdi is calling on workers at Amazon's logistics center in Leipzig to stop working from 12:30 p.m. ET, it said, after 600 workers at its facilities in Bad Hersfeld and around 300 in Leipzig went on strike on May 14.

Amazon employs around 9,000 people in Germany and has come under fire from the union for refusing to implement a collective agreement on employment conditions similar to deals at other mail order and retail firms.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby on Sunday urged Lebanon's Shi'ite militant Hezbollah to stop fighting alongside government forces in Syria's civil war, after two rockets hit a Shi'ite Muslim district of Beirut.

Sunday's rocket attack was the first to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighboring Syria, which has heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared on Saturday that his heavily-armed fighters were committed to the conflict against what he called radical Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria, whatever the cost.

As evidence mounts that a mid-year slowdown is taking place in the world economy, the next few days will offer a clearer glimpse of how that will impinge on policymaking and buoyant financial markets.

Global stocks stumbled last Thursday in one of the few times the grey economic reality cut through this year's reverie in financial markets.

And that could mark the start of a trend, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last week hinted the U.S. central bank could soon scale back its monthly bond purchases that have flooded stock markets with new cash.

A gunman randomly firing from his pickup truck killed one person and wounded five, including the sheriff of Concho County, Texas, on Sunday before the suspect was killed in a shootout with law enforcement, officials said.

Authorities recovered an assault rifle, a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from the suspect, who was said to be 23 years old and from North Carolina. The name was withheld pending notification of relatives, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

The statement identified the dead victim as Alicia Torres, 41, who was shot dead in her car, the statement said.

European industrialists are sounding the alarm over a growing skills shortage on the continent that threatens their competitiveness and leaves manufacturing companies scrambling to find enough engineers.

Chief executives of some of Europe's biggest manufacturers said that problems around youth unemployment, demographics and the education system all mean that engineers could be increasingly difficult to find in the future. This would force their companies to move more research and development facilities to countries with a greater supply of engineers, such as China or India.

A rocket was fired from south Lebanon at Israel, Lebanese media reported Sunday night.

Residents in the area of Metula, near the border with Lebanon, reported hearing a high-pitched whistle followed by a loud boom before midnight, according to a report in Ynet news. There were no initial reports of injury or damage.

A security source told Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper that the rocket was fired from the area of Burj al-Marouk, near the town of Marjayoun. The town is about five kilometers (3 miles) from Metula.

Israel Defense Forces troops were dispatched to the area to locate the rocket, if it fell within Israel, Ynet reported. Troops from the UNIFIL peacekeeping force also conducted searches inside Lebanon, The Daily Star reported.

President Barack Obama wiped away tears during a tour of tornado-ravaged Moore, Oklahoma today, as he witnessed the sheer devastation for himself and embraced survivors, many of whom have lost everything.

'We've got your back,' he told residents as he committed federal resources to help the still-reeling community rebuild. Standing with Governor Mary Fallin and other state and federal officials amid the rubble he said the job will be enormous but he insisted 'we're going to be with you all the way.'

Twenty-four people, including 10 children, were killed when the monstrous EF5 tornado barreled through the Oklahoma City suburb with little notice last Monday afternoon.

David Cameron is planning new powers to muzzle Islamic hate preachers accused of provoking terrorist outrages such as the killing of soldier Lee Rigby.

The Prime Minister wants to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’ and is to head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) made up of senior Ministers, MI5, police and moderate religious leaders.

The high-powered group will study a number of measures, including banning extremist clerics from being given public platforms to incite students, prisoners and other followers – and forcing mosque leaders to answer for ‘hate preachers’.

Two people missing after a charity race in the sea at Southwold off the Suffolk coast have been found, said Humberside Coastguard.

More than 130 people took part in the swim when some "got into trouble after suffering from the effects of hypothermia", according to the coastguard.

Dozens had to be pulled from the sea by lifeboats while others swam to the shore themselves. All were conscious and there have been no reported fatalities, according to a spokeswoman for the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA).

Two swimmers - including a woman from Kettering - who were reported missing earlier have since been found.

The MCA spokeswoman added it was unclear how the swimmers got into difficulty as the weather conditions were fine but the water was "very cold".

Chancellor Angela Merkel has not alienated conservative German voters by pushing her Christian Democrats into the center but has instead put the party on course to win for a third straight term in September, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine on Sunday, the powerful leader of the CDU's conservative wing made it clear to fellow right wingers they should stop sniping at Merkel if they want to help keep the party in power for four more years.

Schaeuble also ruled out for the first time a "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), a right-center alliance that many analysts expect to be the outcome in September. He also ruled out a coalition with the Greens.

When Israeli jets bomb Syria to deny it or its allies "game-changer" weapons, they play according to one core rule: ensuring the Jewish state maintains the military superiority to swiftly prevail in any war.

Although they outgun Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, the Israelis assume all three allied adversaries may have to be fought at once - an unprecedented scenario complicated by the probable launch of thousands of missiles into the Jewish state.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned countries with possible cases of the SARS-like novel coronavirus on Thursday that they must share information and not allow commercial labs to profit from the virus, which has killed 22 people worldwide.

Saudi Arabia, where the first case occurred, has said the development of diagnostic tests for the disease has been delayed by a foreign laboratory's patent rights on the SARS-like virus.

"Making deals between scientists because they want to take IP (intellectual property), because they want to be the world's first to publish in scientific journals, these are issues we need to address," WHO Director General Margaret Chan told health ministers attending the WHO's annual conference in Geneva.

Spanish officials tell a dramatic turnaround story: from near-bankruptcy a year ago to model of budget austerity and reform now.
There are just two things missing: jobs and growth. And only one potential salvation: exports.

Ministers reel off a litany of statistics to show how much has been achieved: the budget deficit has been cut from 11.2 percent of GDP in 2009 to 6.98 percent last year. Some 375,000 public sector jobs have gone, labor costs are down to 2005 levels and competitiveness has improved.

Senior executives boast of how they have trimmed the bloated debts of their multinational conglomerates, hastily bolted together with abundant cheap money during the boom years.

Depending on your point of view, U.S. General Keith Alexander is either an Army four-star trying to stave off a cyber Pearl Harbor attack, or he is an overreaching spy chief who wants to eavesdrop on the private emails of every American.

Alexander, 61, has headed the National Security Agency since 2005, making him the longest-serving chief in the history of an intelligence unit so secretive that it was dubbed "No Such Agency." Alexander also runs U.S. Cyber Command, which he helped to create in 2010 to oversee the country's offensive and defensive operations in cyberspace.

Vilified, ostracised, threatened in the Middle East, Israel is about to join the Gulf Arab states as a fossil fuel giant that could tie it closer to its neighbours and Western Europe.

A natural gas bonanza is about to begin. By the end of this year Israel will be looking to shift the production of electricity to gas-powered generators producing half the Jewish state's wattage.

The change will save it $12bn (£8m), which was the net extra cost caused by the need to import coal to cover the huge drop, from 40% of fuel for electrical generation to zero, caused by the destruction of gas pipelines from Egypt by militant groups.

HOUSTON (CBS Houston)Texas state health officials are urging people to take precautions to reduce the risk of contracting West Nile virus, after the state confirmed its first case of the illness for the season.

In a report released Friday, The Texas Department of State Health Services stated that the first case of the West Nile illness of the season was confirmed in an adult male from Anderson County.

Reports indicate that the man is recovering from the neuroinvasive form of the disease. There were no other details released about the man.

Last year, Texas reported 1,868 human cases of West Nile illness as well as 89 deaths From the disease.

Two women died Saturday -- one of them after being swept away moments after being inches from her would-be rescuers -- due to raging floodwaters in San Antonio, which braced for yet more drenching rains.

At one point Saturday, a storm and subsequent floods had knocked out power to about 12,000 customers and spurred the closure of dozens of streets in the Texas city and the surrounding county, authorities said.

David Cameron is to attempt to launch a crackdown on the preachers of hate blamed by the Government for the extremism that led to the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

The Prime Minister’s fightback will come with the launch of a taskforce to tackle all forms of radicalisation that can lead to violent extremism and terrorism.

The group will include the most senior members of the Cabinet, including Nick Clegg, George Osborne, Theresa May, Eric Pickles and Chris Grayling, as well the Muslim Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi.

Police in France have said the stabbing of a uniformed soldier in Paris may have been inspired by the murder of British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby in London.

The 23-year-old French soldier, Cedric Cordier, was in a busy underground train station in the west of the city when he was stabbed in the throat by a man believed to be of North African origin at around 6pm on Saturday.

French President Francois Hollande said the attacked could not "at this stage" be linked to the murder of Drummer Rigby last Wednesday.

He added: "We still do not know the exact circumstances of the attack or the identity of the attacker, but we are looking at all options."